Acer Aspire 8920 review

The Acer Aspire 8920 was born to entertain. From its huge 18.4in display and Blu-ray drive to its extremely powerful processor and graphics card you can be guaranteed there won't be a dull moment with this laptop around.

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Specifications

Expert's Rating

OVERALL

BUILD QUALITY

FEATURES

VALUE FOR MONEY

Price when reviewed

£1,339.39

Looking for a laptop to keep you amused? The Acer Aspire 8920 was born to entertain. From its huge 18.4in display and Blu-ray drive to its extremely powerful processor and graphics card you can be guaranteed there won't be a dull moment with this laptop around.

There's no getting away from it - this laptop is huge. That's not necessarily a bad thing if you're planning on leaving it in one place, but you wouldn't want to carry its 4.1kg of bulk even the smallest of distances if you can avoid it. However, that does mean that Acer has room to build in a huge 18.4in screen, with a Full HD resolution of 1,920x1,080 so you can sit back and enjoy Blu-ray movies in all their glory.

It's also incredibly powerful - laptops are more accustomed to two figure WorldBench 6 scores, but the 8920 managed to just sneak into three digit territory with a result of 100. Having a 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 processor and 4GB of RAM at its disposal no doubt helped.

It's no slouch when it comes to graphics either, and its nVidia GeForce 9650MGS managed to achieve a massive 113fps running Crysis at Low settings, although with more demanding options it only achieved 9fps so you won't be able to play games with everything turned on.

While you wouldn't really want to use it for that long on battery, it managed to keep going two hours 18 minutes running MobileMark 2007 which is impressive for a machine of this size and spec.

In addition to a full size keyboard and numeric keypad, you also get some touch sensitive media controls to the left of the keyboard which can be a little confusing to use at first, but work well enough. There's HDMI out, so you'll have no problems hooking it up to a modern TV, and four USB ports for expansion, although no FireWire.

Acer Aspire 8920: Specs

2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Do T9300

4GB RAM

18.4in display (1,920x1,080)

nVidia GeForce 9650 MGS

Blu-ray drive

HDMI

4 x USB 2.0

4.1kg WorldBench 6 score: 100 MobileMark 2007: 138 mins

2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Do T9300

4GB RAM

18.4in display (1,920x1,080)

nVidia GeForce 9650 MGS

Blu-ray drive

HDMI

4 x USB 2.0

4.1kg WorldBench 6 score: 100 MobileMark 2007: 138 mins

OUR VERDICT

This is a big, powerful machine and although it's expensive it's not exorbitant, coming in at £1,339. It makes a decent entertainment machine and desktop replacement, but while its battery life is reasonable, you really wouldn't want to transport it too far.